Seminar

Is it fair to have high expectations of a preview? Medium expectations? Any expectations? What if the preview ticket is full priced? Discounted?

Previews live in a gray area, particularly in the era of blogging, when many of us review at least some shows that we pay for ourselves. The area is even grayer when it is an early preview.

(When we receive press tickets, the situation is clear: we go to late previews, when the shows are deemed ready to critique, and we don't post our reviews until the official opening.)

Theresa Rebeck's Seminar (directed by Sam Gold) is set to open in 11 days. It feels early to write about it, but tickets are being sold, and I did pay for one. Also, the show seems to be in good shape, with polished performances. And the negatives are in the sinews of the play, rather than being tweakable over time. For these reasons, I have made the decision to write this review and post it now.

So, here's the thing: I didn't believe a single character, situation, interaction, or conflict in this show.

Seminar is the story of, yes, a seminar. Four young writers--two women, two men--pay a famous writer/editor (Alan Rickman) $5,000 each to teach ten classes in the home of one of the writers. Anyone who has ever seen a show or movie or TV show depicting a writing class--or who is aware of Rickman as an actor--knows that the teacher will be snarky, insulting, and belittling and claim it is for the students' own good. That some of the students will be better writers than others, that at least one will only care about art, that at least one will very much care about commerce, that sexual pairings will occur, and that a secret or two will be revealed are all also predictable.

And that's okay. Plays don't have to be startling or ground-breaking to be interesting. The playwright can show us why this group of students is interesting, why this grumpy teacher is compelling, why these two people do or don't get together, and so on.

But Rebeck doesn't. Instead, she gives us people, with random arrays of attributes, whose behavior is neither consistent nor convincing. Take Lily Rabe's character, Kate, a Bennington graduate with an enviable rent-controlled apartment. [Spoilers follow.] She's a feminist who lets repeated, egregiously sexist use of the word pussy go unremarked. She's foolishly attached to a story she has been working on for six years, yet suddenly can write a whole book in a couple of weeks. She hates the teacher yet sleeps with him, but not because of the sort of love-hate attraction that does occur in real life. Instead, it's a shock effect that doesn't work.

Or take Izzy (Hettienne Park), who seems to exist to provide a contrast to Kate. She seduces the teacher and one of the students, and in some confusing chronology seems to be sleeping with them virtually at the same time. Writing doesn't seem that important to her--certainly not $5,000 important.

Rickman's character Leonard is set up as a rat, but we find out later that he has done nice things for some of the students. Rather than this adding a level of complexity to his character, it elicits a "huh?"  For example, early in the play Leonard insults an artistically inclined writer by telling him he should be writing for Hollywood. Late in the play, we're supposed to perceive Leonard's introducing that writer to a Hollywood bigwig as a mitzvah.

Another annoying fault of Seminar is that the characters' writing is evaluated without having been read. Leonard eviscerates one story based on the first line and is greatly impressed with two others based on the first couple of pages. Later, Martin (Hamish Linklater), the student who is least impressed with Leonard, becomes convinced that Leonard has written a great book based on, yes, the first couple of pages.

The direction is smooth. The acting is fine. Rickman nails his big speech. But the play just isn't good.


(tdf ticket, third row, rear mezz)

Venus in Fur

A story I once heard kept haunting me during Manhattan Theatre Club’s presentation of David Ives’ Venus in Fur: when Michelangelo worked on the Sistine Chapel’s The Last Judgment, the Pope’s Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, continually complained about the nudity in it. So Michelangelo added his visage to the painting, casting him as a character in the underworld, for all to see.

Ives’ character, Thomas (Hugh Dancy), seems reminiscent to Biagio. A sanctimonious director/playwright, who says “ciao” at the end of his phone conversations, relinquishes his identity of game master, of controller, so readily in the play that the story becomes, in a sense, the ultimate revenge fantasy—which got me wondering: who pissed off Ives so much? After all, the playwright-director/actor-director relationship isn’t always ideal. Wouldn’t seeing a comeuppance on stage offer liberation? Could Thomas be more than just a character? And, for me, that was the problem: this conspiracy theory fascinated me far greater than the play itself.

This sexy story about submission, based on the 1870 novel Venus im Pelz by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch—a work that coined the phrase “sado-masochism”— contains a clever construct, a play-within-a-play structure: we see both the audition and Thomas’ new play unfold. Thomas, as director/playwright, has just finished auditioning actresses and the dearth of talent frustrates him. He vents to his fiancée on his cell phone that he longs for femininity, something the current crop of performers—dressed half like hookers, half like dykes—cannot provide. A clap of thunder, much like the sound of a snapping whip, interrupts his tirade and Vanda (Nina Arianda, who also played the role in the 2010 Classic Stage Company production) bursts in from the rain, wrapped in a trench coat, and brandishing a broken umbrella.

A force of nature herself, she chatters continuously until Thomas reopens the casting for Venus in Fur, a play coincidentally that’s also based on the same von Sacher-Masoch’s book about an aristocrat who becomes a willing slave to a woman. At first, Vanda and Thomas can’t connect. She sees his play as S&M porn; he insists it shows a great love story. As the audition progresses, though, Thomas’ perception of Vonda changes as she convincingly mimics the Continental diction of a refined Victorian woman completely transforming herself. As the two continue reciting lines, Vonda and Thomas switch roles, as she offers him direction and, ultimately, subjugates him.

Arianda makes Vanda a multilayered character—initially she poses as a bondage babe clad in high-heeled ankle boots and black leather with a trash-talking mouth, before metamorphosing into someone doe-eyed and naïve, perhaps even stupid, to a more calculating figure, who just happens to bring costumes, including a white virginal dress for her and a $3 green velveteen coat for Thomas. Dancy’s portrayal isn’t as vivid. He often gets a laugh with a wide-eyed look of incredulity or a well-placed grimace. Yet, at times, his character feels withdrawn, almost too insular, rather than displaying the passivity of subservience expected.

The set, designed by John Lee Beatty, realistically portrays the cold barrenness of a rehearsal hall, with its eerie fluorescence—especially effective are the shafts of light filtering through the window as if the building once housed a factory (designed by Peter Kaczorowski). Directed ably by Walter Bobbie, the juxtaposition of the past with the present never becomes confusing and the machine-gun like dialogue moves easily, combining humor with an eroticism that’s both sensuous and uncomfortably sinister. Unfortunately, though, the story never surpasses its initial frothiness. It provocates without really moving you, which gets me thinking again: who is Ives’ Biagio?

Limited 10-week engagement through Sunday, December 18.
(Tickets purchased at Telecharge/mezzanine D3)

The Blue Flower

Jim Bauer and Ruth Bauer's musical The Blue Flower, currently in previews at Second Stage, has an awful lot going for it. Its sweeping, romantic plot covers both world wars, and its complex, interconnected themes explore the fine line between creativity and madness; the highs and lows of love, both romantic and brotherly; the hellishness and deeply unsettling beauty of war; the impact of world history on the national, the local, and the individual. Its book, like its very pretty score, is entirely original. It is not based on a movie, television show, comic strip, or golden oldies radio station.
This production of The Blue Flower makes ample use of projections and short films, which appear on a screen suspended within an interesting, multi-tiered, wooden set, on which the small, excellent cast and notably tight, swinging band perform. Chase Brock's choreography frequently twists the actors' bodies into surprising shapes, and the cast into cool vistas. The show is ably directed. What The Blue Flower lacks, however, is any sort of unifying thread that brings its ingredients--not to mention its enormous thematic ideas and concepts--together into anything approaching a satisfying whole.

The show places focus on Max, a German artist who speaks in his own, invented language that he calls Maxperanto. Max has left Europe--and everyone he loves, living and dead--for the United States during the onset of World War II. As the show begins, Max suffers a fatal heart attack, and the musical proper takes us back through his life--presumably as it flashes before his eyes during his dying moments--from the turn of the century through both wars, with emphasis on the first. Because Max has been working on a book of collages about his past, the show unfolds as a series of memories, which are presented through the use of movement, song, projections, and short films.

Yet The Blue Flower misses the mark. It can't seem to figure out if it's supposed to be serious or flip, which very quickly becomes very frustrating: A lengthy speech that Max gives--entirely in gibberish--about the murder-suicide of Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, and his mistress, is played, it seems, for broad laughs, while the death of a horse amidst a roadside bombing is treated, a bit later, as if it's the worst thing that has ever happened in the entire history of every war that has ever taken place on the planet. What should be funny is often glossed over; what might be truly touching or gently moving gets too bogged down in grandiose ideas to tangle with.

Horses, it seems, carry some sort of symbolic weight in the show, at least given the frequency with which they are mentioned, or shown on projections, but I was never able to catch why; conversely, curiously, the relevance of the blue flower that the musical is named for is given passing mention once. Throughout the show, things that should be justified are not: why is the score, pretty as it is, so steeped in American country and western music? Is it because Max delivers a lecture--in gibberish--in Texas? Speaking of gibberish, why is the need for a whole new language so important? Maxperanto is explained, near the end of the show, but not in any way that is relevatory, or even satisfying. So the use of the made-up language throughout the show becomes just one more gimmick that never finds true relevance.

I can't tell if this show has been workshopped to death, or if it never cohered to begin with, but there seem to be altogether too many ideas and not enough grasp of the source material. A show about Dadaism and Expressionism is a great idea, but not if the aesthetics of these movements fail utterly to translate effectively to the stage. Similarly, a show using film as a backdrop is a great idea--and has been used effectively in all sorts of other productions these days--but not if the projections merely alternate between showing images that don't quite mesh with the live action, and flashing lines of dialogue that the actors have just delivered. What might have added depth and deeper meaning to the show, then, becomes yet another distraction.

In such a mishmash of ideas, innovations, and techniques, the characters quickly get lost. They fall in love, drift apart, fight, forgive, wound and betray, but they remain stick figures throughout: they are Profound Artists, with the exception of one Profound Scientist, but we don't get the chance to draw close to any of them, nor to fully grasp why they all love one another as passionately as we are told they do. So when they die--and they all die, because we all die, eventually--it doesn't really matter. They were never anything but big ideas to begin with.

Question of the Week: What Are Your Spookiest Theater Memories?

When I was a kid, growing up in Pittsburgh, I saw what must've been one of the spookiest, most unsettling productions of Ibsen's Ghosts, ever, at Carnegie Mellon University. The audience sat upstage on bleachers facing the performers, who did the show downstage in front of a huge, empty auditorium. The floor of the stage was covered in dirt, which, by the end of the show, covered the actors, too. A life-sized dummy of each castmember was set at stage left, and at various times, actors would address the dummies instead of one another. As they became more unhinged, they became more expressive with one another's dummies than they were with one another. My stomach, which began to twist midway through the show, was in some of the most painful knots I can remember by the curtain call. Ghosts is a weird, creepy show as it is; this double weird, creepy production scared the bejesus out of me, and continues to haunt me every so often.

I don't think that it was until I saw Conor McPherson's Shining City, which ran on Broadway in 2006, that anything in the theater came close to scaring me as much as that CMU production of Ghosts did. But Shining City is not a scary play, per se. It just packs a terrifying, awesome punch at the end--one that that made me scream and my husband pee a little. I loved Shining City and its surprise ending, but Ghosts still takes the cake for me.

How about you? What is the scariest production, or moment, or scene, or character you've ever seen? What continues to haunt you after all these years of theatergoing? What tapped into your deepest, darkest fears? Happy Halloween, all. BOO!

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess

When I first heard the commotion regarding the new Broadway adaptation of Porgy & Bess--directed by Diane Paulus, with a new book by Suzan-Lori Parks and musical adaptations by Deirdre Murray--my mind wandered to a discussion I remembered from my days as an undergraduate studying English Literature. In an Introduction to Literary Theory course, my professor spent a fair amount of time contemplating Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Frankenstein. Despite the insane amount of liberties he took with the text, Branagh felt compelled to title his film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, seemingly out of respect for the author and her work. We spent several classes discussing whether Branagh was truly sincere in his choice of title and tribute, or if he was trying to pull one over on his audience and scholars alike. Having since seen the film, and recognizing the glaring, questionable changes Branagh made, I find myself siding with the latter camp.

Similarly, Paulus and company are calling their production The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, although on paper what they're presenting seems to be anything but. The historical Porgy & Bess is a four-hour, sung through opera that features some of the greatest music in the American canon. Paulus' production is a streamlined adaptation that scales down the work's operatic orchestrations and heavily revises some of the characters. Aside from Audra McDonald, who has operatic training, and Phillip Boykin, a bass-baritone, the cast is comprised of musical theatre performers. Much has been made of dramatic changes Paulus and Parks have made, including the decision to have the crippled Porgy walk with a cane rather than his traditional goat cart. Musical adaptor Murray lowered the familiar high notes in "Summertime," claiming a rationale that the song is a lullaby and high notes would "wake the baby" (a live baby was actually used in the Boston production). Many claimed that Parks and Paulus had also decided to brighten up the play's downbeat ending, although reports from Boston suggest that this plan has been ditched.

While I can understand why Stephen Sondheim found himself angry enough to write The New York Times an open letter airing his grievances about the proposed changes, I do believe that it is unfair to judge a work that you haven't seen. At the time Sondheim was writing, not a single performance had been given, and he (and many others) were responding to comments made by the creative team. I agree that much of what Paulus, Parks, Murray, and McDonald said was boneheaded, but I'm not going to offer an opinion on the adaptation until I've attended a performance. Does this production align exactly with what the Gershwins'--along with Dubose and Dorothy Heyward--envisioned for this American opera in 1935? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that it might not be a powerful piece of music theatre. In his rave review of the Boston tryout, The New Yorker's Hilton Als claims that the production's "great achievement is to cut through Heyward’s muddy folklore and to present us with something more profound." I cannot tell you if I agree with this yet, but I'm not willing to write something off until I've actually seen it. More in December.

Question of the Week—Porgy and Bess: How much revision is too much?

Composer Steven Sondheim really, really hates the idea of the new version of Porgy and Bess on Broadway (opening on January 12, 2012). In summary, he disagrees with the decision to dub it George Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, the new happy ending, the more in-depth character backstory and an assortment of other things (see his piece in the New York Times at http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-re vamped-porgy-and-bess/?scp=1&sq=stephen%20sondheim%20porgy&st=cse). But he’s not the only one who takes umbrage at the 1935 opera’s transformation into a commercial Broadway musical. Twenty-four pages of online commentary follow Sondheim’s letter, most agreeing with him to some extent.

So, the question becomes: Is director Diane Paulus and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks going too far with their reinterpretation? Sondheim thinks so, saying: “I can hear the outraged cries now about stifling creativity and discouraging directors who want to reinterpret plays and musicals in order to bring “fresh perspectives,” as they are wont to say, but there is a difference between reinterpretation and wholesale rewriting.”

To an extent I agree with him. Too much revision dilutes a work, and removes its original intent. And Paulus and Parks’ version offers a vastly changed work. Still, I cannot castigate them for trying. Isn’t that what artists should do? Shouldn’t they bravely venture into uncharted territory, even if many may feel the work is obscene, outlandish or self-indulgent? When I first heard about a Broadway version of The Who’s Tommy in 1993, I believed it was just another attempt to capitalize on a known entity despite its obvious inappropriateness for a stage musical. How wrong I was: sometimes what seems so miscalculated actually works. Another case in point: I love A Chorus Line, yet the 2006 revival felt lackluster and dated. When I saw the show, I wished that someone had really tinkered with it to make it more resonant and relevant.

So, what of Porgy and Bess? So many deviations from the original do feel unreasonable, like the essence of the show may be removed. I will go see it, but my expectations aren’t high. However, I am prepared to concede. Paulus and Parks may be lambasted for their efforts. Or the revivial could be brilliant. We will see.